MailChimp Brings Geolocation To Email Marketing

Today MailChimp released the latest version of its email marketing software, adding several new tools that allow users to target their subscribers with location-based technology free of charge.

Geotargeting gives users the ability to send segmented campaigns based on subscribers' locations. Users just choose a city, define the size of the radius around the city, and MailChimp automatically sends the campaign to subscribers in that area. “We’re excited to offer our customers an easier and more powerful way to promote local initiatives like events and sales without having to do any work on their lists. We already have all the data,” says MailChimp CEO Ben Chestnut.

Timewarp is another new feature that sends email campaigns in the local time zone of the subscribers receiving it. For example, if a campaign with a list that includes subscribers in every time zone in the United States were set to be delivered at 9 a.m., Timewarp would automatically segment the list by time zone and send the campaign to each segment at 9 a.m. local time. “One of the issues facing users with large lists is finding the most effective time of day to send campaigns,” says Chestnut. “Our split-testing tool evaluates how campaigns perform at different times of day, but if subscribers are in different time zones, the results of split testing may be misleading because emails are reaching their inboxes at different local times. Timewarp adds a new level of insight for those users.”

MailChimp’s auto-translation tool allows users to create campaigns in one language and send them in another. Users can either select a language they want to use, or have MailChimp automatically detect each subscriber’s language and translate the email on the fly. This feature makes it easier for users with international lists to communicate with subscribers, no matter where they’re located.

Other features in the release include Delivery Doctor, a tool for prediagnosing delivery issues with ISPs and spam filters; an integration with Flickr; and a redesigned template directory.

About MailChimp

MailChimp supports more than 3 million subscribers worldwide, sending 3 billion emails per month. The MailChimp platform improves the user experience by providing seamless, yet powerful email marketing and publishing features that are easy and affordable enough for a small business to get started, but powerful enough for a large company looking for an enterprise level solution. MailChimp’s platform provides an open API used by more than 250,000 subscribers. MailChimp integrates with many third party applications including Facebook, Twitter, Eventbrite, SurveyGizmo, Salesforce, WordPress, Magento, Joomla, Drupal and Google Analytics. And best of all, prices start at free.